Elephant Poaching in Africa - Some Statistics 2012/2013

[Mel]

2012 another deadly year for elephants in Africa: CITES

(AFP) – Feb 19, 2013

NAIROBI — The number of African elephants killed by poachers in 2012 will most likely be higher than the 25,000 illegally killed the previous year, the head of UN wildlife trade regulator CITES said Tuesday.

"Right across the range of the African elephant, in 2011 25,000 elephants were illegally killed, and based upon our analysis done so far, 2012 looks like the situation deteriorated rather than improved," said CITES Secretary General John Scanlon.

The 25,000 killed in 2011 includes 17,000 dead elephants actually recorded by CITES in some 40 percent of the animals' range, with the remainder an extrapolation.

Iain Douglas-Hamilton, the founder of Save the Elephants, said that while in terms of sheer numbers killed the 1970s and 1980s was worse, the situation today was a "very big crisis" and in "other ways it is much worse."

Today "there are fewer elephants and demand for ivory seems to be even higher", Douglas-Hamilton told reporters, on the sidelines of a meeting at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) headquarters in Nairobi.

David Higgins, chief of Interpol's environmental crime division, said that poaching involved organised crime gangs, in addition to noting links to insurgent groups in Africa and possible links to terrorist organisations.

"Unless we break these criminal networks, it will continue," Higgins said.

Africa has seen a sharp rise in the illegal trade in wildlife products like ivory and rhino horn.

Poaching has spiked recently in Africa, with whole herds of elephants massacred for their ivory.

One kilogramme (about two pounds) of ivory is currently estimated to be worth around $2,000 on the Asian black market.

Rhino horn can sell for as much as $80,000 a kilo, and poachers have killed some 2,000 rhinos in the past two years, a huge number considering only about 25,000 rhinos remain.

The illegal ivory trade is mostly fuelled by demand in Asia and the Middle East, where elephant tusks and rhinoceros horns are used to make ornaments and in traditional medicine.

Trade in elephant ivory, with rare exceptions, has been outlawed since 1989 after elephant populations in Africa dwindled from millions in the mid-20th century to some 600,000 by the end of the 1980s.

Africa is now home to an estimated 472,000 elephants, whose survival is threatened by poaching as well as a rising human population that is causing habitat loss.

[Mel]

Reliable numbers for 2012 are hard to come by it seems. This is the most recent I could find:

Number of Elephants Killed in 2012
in Environmental Crime

The International Fund for Animal Welfare estimates that up to 50,000 elephants were killed around the world in 2012. The elephants were killed by poachers in order to supply ivory to worldwide markets.

The global trade in ivory has been illegal since a worldwide ban went into effect in 1990.

As of 2013, there is an estimated 500,000 African elephants and 50,000 Asian elephants remaining in the wild.

Source: Derek Baldwin, “Special report: Interpol acts to stem ivory trade,” Gulf News, May 22, 2013.

[Bushcraft]

Thanks Mel

[Toko]

Kenya: KWS Launches Countrywide Hunt for Poachers of Four Rhinos
28 MAY 2013

Kenya Wildlife Service has launched a major operation in pursuit of poachers who killed four rhinos in the last one week across the country.

Security teams are following crucial leads of poachers who killed rhinos at Lake Nakuru National Park, Solio Ranch (Nyeri), Ngulia Sanctuary (Tsavo West National Park) and Meru National Park.

The poachers made away with the rhino horns. Since the beginning of the year, Kenya has lost 21 rhinos and 117 elephants to poachers.

Out of these, 37 elephants were killed in protected areas while 80 were outside protected areas.

These numbers include last week's poaching incidents. Last year, Kenya lost 384 elephants and 30 rhinos to criminals, a worrying trend that is not sustainable.

[Mel]

[...]

The latest analysis of poaching data estimates that in 2012 some 15,000 elephants were illegally killed at 42 sites across 27 African countries participating in Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE) , a programme of CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora), with funding from the European Union.

According to MIKE analysis, this amounts to an estimated 22,000 elephants illegally killed continent-wide in 2012, a slight reduction on the estimated 25,000 elephants poached in 2011.

“With an estimated 22,000 African Elephants illegally killed in 2012, we continue to face a critical situation. Current elephant poaching in Africa remains far too high, and could soon lead to local extinctions if the present killing rates continue. The situation is particularly acute in Central Africa—where the estimated poaching rate is twice the continental average,” said John E. Scanlon, CITES Secretary-General.

[...]

The IUCN/SSC African Elephant Specialist Group estimates the African Elephant (Loxodonta africana) population is around 500,000.

Full article here: http://www.cites.org/eng/news/pr/2013/2 ... igures.php

[Lisbeth]

Depressing

[Mel]

Indeed, Lis...

[Mel]

From: phys.org

[nan]

this "plans" speak alone